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Jewish World Review March 20, 2000 /13 Adar II, 5760

David Horowitz

David Horowitz
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Deafening Silence

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- YOU PROBABLY DON'T REMEMBER the name "Ronald Taylor," and you probably think you have never heard of John Kroll or Joseph Healy or Emil Sanielevici. Why should you? The last three gentlemen were the white victims of a black killer, Ronald Taylor, in Wilkinsburg, Penn., just a couple of weeks ago. The story made the front pages for about a day. And then just as suddenly it fell off the nation's radar screen.

However, I will bet you can identify Matthew Shepard, or James Byrd, or Buford Furrow or, for that matter, Tawana Brawley. These were the victims, the perpetrator, and the phony victim of politically correct crimes in which all the actors assumed roles that confirmed the prejudices of our liberal elites.

 

A DOUBLE STANDARD?
Taylor, a resident of publicly subsidized housing, recently became incensed at maintenance workers trying to fix the door of his apartment. "You're all white trash, racist pigs," he exploded. "You're dead." He then went on a rampage that randomly killed Kroll, Healy, and Sanielevici, and critically wounded two others. When the FBI searched his apartment they found anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, anti-Italian, and anti-white hate literature.

Taylor's crime did not confirm the nation's most protected racial prejudices, and that is why his criminal acts have been pushed so quickly out of sight. We get no Time and Newsweek cover stories about Taylor, no network features about black racism, no White House press conferences to berate the nation, no Capitol Hill resolutions authored by liberal Democratic Reps. Barney Frank (Ma.) and Maxine Waters (Ca.) to condemn the outrage, and no calls for hate-crime legislation to specifically include endangered white males.

To these indicators, let me add a personal note. As author of a best-selling biography on the Kennedys, I am familiar enough to the media so that every time a Kennedy kills himself (or someone else), I get calls from a dozen shows at the networks, the cable channels, and even the BBC to come on as an expert commentator on the event. But even though I have a current book out called Hating Whitey,, which is high up on the Amazon.com best-seller list, I have yet to receive a single interview request to talk about this hate-whitey crime.

 

THE WHITE DEVIL MADE HIM DO IT
Even more striking, perhaps, than this media blackout are comments that have been volunteered by the few black spokespeople who have actually acknowledged the racial dimension of the crime. For example, the Rev. Thelma C. Mitchell, pastor at the Wilkinsburg Baptist Church, told her congregation in a "healing" service: "You cannot run from violence in the United States because the United States was founded on violence. Why are we suddenly shocked, brothers and sisters? The whole concept of racism and prejudice and targeting people, this is not a new game. Although I in no way agree with the methods he used, I suspect Mr. Taylor really did reflect a growing frustration in this community because too many African-American young men cannot find a meaningful job." In other words, the white devil made him do it.

Far from being an extreme example, this kind of formulation functions as a mainstream excuse in the black community for the racial outrages committed by its members. Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard professor and one of the media's most quoted experts on the psychology of racism, is a case in point. Poussaint managed to identify Taylor's act as a case of "extreme racism." But in an interview with the Washington Times on March 3, Poussaint also speculated, in effect, that the white devil must have made Taylor do it. He said that the shooter may have gained a "generalized hatred toward all whites" from his personal experiences. The Times reported: "He [Poussaint] wondered whether the suspect was 'abused' by a white authority figure, such as a boss or a police officer. 'Or was he stopped for racial profiling,' he asked."

In fact, according to Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association in Washington D.C., only the white devil can be racist. Questioned about the killings, Hampton told the Times, "It's impossible for blacks to practice racism on whites. Racism is the sum total of prejudice and power … and blacks don't have power in our society." Tell that to Taylor's three dead victims.

 

IN SEARCH OF OUTRAGE
What Wilkinsburg reveals is a case of the chickens coming home to roost. As I have pointed out in Hating Whitey,, an entire academic industry devoted to promoting anti-white racism, housed at elite institutions like Princeton and Harvard, has flourished in recent decades. In its view, America is a racist universe in which blacks can only be victims and whites only oppressors. It is an academic version of the Johnnie Cochran school of racial prosecution and defense: indict America as racist, and let the culprit go free. "Anti-white feelings … are not unusual" among some segments of the black community, Poussaint conceded to the Times. "Blacks who have such feelings against whites 'may feel justified,' Poussaint said, 'because during slavery and segregation, a collection of whites kept them down.'"

Now imagine if white professors talked similarly about the racists who dragged James Byrd to his death. E.g.: "When asked about the lynching of Byrd, Dr. Poussaint of Harvard acknowledged that it was a case of "extreme racism" but wondered whether the suspects had been previously 'abused' by a black authority figure such as a boss or a police officer." What if this hypothetical Poussaint noted that blacks commit nearly half the violent crimes in the United States—many of them involving whites as victims—but speculated that whites who have feelings of hatred against blacks "may feel justified"? What would we think of Dr. Poussaint if he had said that?

Fortunately, these tragic deaths in Wilkinsburg have sparked at least one response from deep within the black left that gives cause for hope. If it is a harbinger of things to come, in fact, it shows just how the troubled state of race relations in America might be turned around. In a column appearing in Salon, Earl Ofari Hutchinson has struck exactly the right note to restore moral balance in the black community. Noting the "deafening silence by blacks" about this racial outrage, Hutchinson wrote, "Blacks must mourn these murders as passionately as they do those of black victims of white attacks and just as passionately call for the harshest punishment of the killer(s)."

Hutchinson is exactly right. But will anyone listen?



JWR contributor David Horowitz is editor of Front Page Magazine and the author of several books, including, Hating Whitey, Art of Political War, Radical Son : A Generational Odyssey . Comment on this article by clicking here.


Up

03/15/00: The Lead Investigator Strikes Back
03/08/00: Racial Killings & Gun Control
02/28/00: Primary Lessons
02/22/00: Racial Shakedowns
01/25/00: Intellectual Class War
01/03/00: A faith that ruined whole continents and destroyed a world of human lives
12/28/99: Brain Dead Till the End
12/14/99: Letter to the past
12/07/99: Why Republicans Lose
11/23/99: MLK is no doubt spinning in his grave
11/10/99: Finding the American Center
11/02/99: Reflections on The Road Taken and Not

© 2000, David Horowitz. A version of this appeared on Intellectual Capital